Statement about Éditions Sans-Détour

Posted by Michael O'Brien
on
December 08, 2018

Éditions Sans-Détour (ESD) has long been a valued Chaosium licensee, releasing a range of beautifully produced Call of Cthulhu materials in French.

ESD's license for Call of Cthulhu expired in September this year. It is with regret that we announce that Chaosium shall not be renewing ESD's license for any products. ESD's permission to use our trademarks, logos and all related intellectual property has been withdrawn.

As fans of Call of Cthulhu, you deserve to know our reasons why sadly we cannot continue this relationship.

In a nutshell: ESD has not paid Chaosium any royalties on any of its sales since late 2016.

Chaosium has patiently tried to work with ESD during this time; however, to date we have not even received any sales data for the past two years, let alone any payments on outstanding royalties. (Not even on crowdfunding projects like Les Masques de Nyarlahotep et Le Jour de la Béte, which are straightforward to calculate and pay).

Last month Chaosium made it clear to ESD that the license had expired and would not be renewed. ESD were advised they are in cardinal breach of its previous license - nb this would have been grounds for immediate termination of the license, if it had not already expired.

Chaosium does not want ESD’s failures to perform its contractual duties to result in you the fans not getting product you already paid for on ESD’s crowdfunding campaigns.

We are willing to work with ESD to enable it to fulfill its crowdfunding obligations to you. However, at a minimum ESD needs to pay Chaosium the royalties it owes under its licenses. Unfortunately, to date, we have received nothing - not even from crowdfunding campaigns completed in 2017.

EDS's failure to comply with the terms of our license agreement leaves Chaosium no choice but to proceed to take legal advice on avenues to settle the substantial debt owed. As Éditions Sans-Détour has long been a valued part of the Call of Cthulhu family, we are saddened that we have been unable to resolve these matters in a constructive manner.

Going forward, Chaosium has a new licensee for Call of Cthulhu in French. A formal announcement will be made shortly.